The Swarm

TDS Editors

At least one of the apparently numerous offending posts, from the Chicago Reader:

Albini skips sausage party, wins six grand.

This past weekend Albini skipped the Electrical Audio message board’s annual meet ‘n’ greet and played $1,500 seven-card stud in the World Series of Poker in Vegas, where he finished 14th overall. [Correction: Albini attended most of the Electrical Audio message board-organized festival after his WSOP appearance.]

Ms & Mr Gossip Wolf
Your 15 year obsession with Steve Albini is bordering on embarrassing, don’t you think? It must certainly be as tiring for you as it is for me. I recognize that you were never able to justify your disdain for him but life may be richer for you if you accept the idea that maybe you have simply been wrong all of this time.
Embarrassing as it is for you, it turns out that he’s a good guy
Making thousands of records for 3 decades for a reasonable rate without ever accepting a royalty payment from any band
Helping to coordinate an on-line community of more than 10,000 who then arranged their own inspiring 3 day underground music event (that for some unknown, hateful reason the two of you use your positions at nationally recognized news outlet to mock)
Continues to live, work and financially contribute to the underground community you now use on your resumes to build your careers up with the Walt Disney Company-ABC Television Group
Does not believe that Taylor Swift’s sad tale of how she cries on her staircase and begs a boy “please don’t go” is the model of feminism for young women
Has handed out hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to families in distress on Christmas day for more than a decade
Sorry to burst your globule of air. Move on ladies. I am sure your time can be better served working on your next installment of your victim-labeling juvenile book series Let Me Show You How To do Things That Boys Already Do or Life Is Hard Being A Girl.

“That’s what you get for making fun of Steve Albini in 1996”- Jessica Hopper

After pages and pages of typical messageboard LOLs, Heather follows up again:

Here’s a little known fact about my house. The phone rings at all hours and crazy people want to “talk” to Steve. They are bat-shit nuts. Steve handles it well. I grow tired of it. Some of them have been famous like the singer from Hole and others are harmless meth-heads who want to talk, buy Steve art and mail it to him as a gift. Then there is the mail; Letters which include naked pictures of open-mouthed tattooed ladies.

Jessica Hopper has been obsessed with Steve for a long time (in that same way). “Reporting” words that other people have told her they heard him say or things that I have supposedly said. Fucking crazy balls. I figured I’d wait it out, right? I mean how long can you be crazy for one guy. Literally 15 years ago she had an obsessed column in her fanzine titled something like “Have you ever met Steve Albini and if you have what was he like?” And even before that she claims to have written a song about him. What?!?!

All of this crazy shit happened before Steve knew who she was. Before he hurt her feelings by responding to her paid work as simultaneously sophomoric, vapid and excruciatingly self-satisfied.

Maybe it is her academic commitment to belittling women and creating a “separate but equal” world for them where all can overcome their inherit victim hurdle by embracing pouty lips and raising the black pride fist that keeps the world from calling her out on her mental illness.

She has been putting the creep on for a long time.

Then her friend “JR” joined in and started some crazed email campaign in hopes of simply continuing correspondence with Steve. They turned that email exchange into an article in her fanzine a million years ago. We still didn’t really know anything about her except “she’s this girl from Minneapolis that liked to stir up shit between Kat and Courtney”. No thanks.

This crazy lady begged Steve to engage with her in some way. Be careful what you wish for. Apology? (Insert spit take here)

For all her rocking in the girl-world, isn’t there another man she can stalk?

More deep analysis by the board, and another followup by Mrs. Whinna:

I have sympathy for the crazies that call. I know it’s part of the deal. As much as it
sucks-a-dick for me, it is the actualization of the theory behind what makes Steve uniquely great. He answers the phone. He has had the same number for 25 years. He available to anyone who has a genuine interest. He doesn’t have an agent or a punk-rock publicist. He participates when asked but he never calls anyone looking for self-promotion. I think it is all so simple that people who are looking for global attention cannot believe it.

Steve is extraordinarily gifted at criticism. 25 years ago he did so regardless of the target, including friends, just so long as the outcome read funny to him. In the past 15 years I have pressed him to target more wisely for my sake.

It is fair that sensitive strangers who have only read Steve’s criticism or one who has been the recipient of a sharp barb have negative opinions. Sure. Whatever. Means almost nothing to me. Ms Hopper is a 15+ year stalker who has run out of stories to print so now she takes her pretend-outrage out on the women of this message board by dismissing them altogether. Maybe the exclusive Riot Grrrl movement retarded her super-ego at such an early age that now she is moving backwards without notice.

If somebody wants to write an unflattering piece about Steve, I can’t stop him but this lunatic is not a journalist to me she is our fucking stalker.

“I can’t see any good coming out of [Heather’s starting] this thread”

Fair enough. The good that came was for me. Feel free to stop now if you have some opinion about its existence.

People go on to bitch whine about Rapeman or somesuch, then a closing response from Whinna: